The current financing round was concluded under the leadership of the Charité Biomedical Fund (CBF-1), managed by Peppermint VenturePartners, as lead investor. The existing investors VC Fonds Technologie Berlin (under the management of IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft) and Vogel Ventures as well as the business angels Jan Bohl and Dr. Wolfgang Vahrson are also investing.
"The digitalization of research work is an extremely attractive growth market," says Dr. Joachim Rautter, Managing Partner of Peppermint CBF-1. "With our focus on innovative companies in the field of digitalization in biomedicine, labfolder fits perfectly into our portfolio. We look forward to supporting labfolder in its further growth with our expertise and our network".
With the new investment and together with partners from the laboratory sector, labfolder will continue to drive forward the development of its existing software solution, which already makes it possible to connect researchers and data, as well as devices, special software and laboratories. "The intelligent, comprehensive networking of data, devices and teams is the next logical step in research," explains founder and CEO Simon Bungers. "It allows scientists from all disciplines to document, evaluate and share research results faster and better - so they can focus on creating innovations without being distracted by tedious paperwork."
The team will be expanded by Dutchman Joris van Winsen, a new member of the management team with many years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, who will support labfolder's growth course.
"Following the successful market entry, we now have the opportunity to further drive labfolder's growth," says Clemens Kabel, Investment Director at IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft. "The platform's focus on modularity and the resulting opportunities have a high scaling potential, which we want to realize together with the partners we already know well from other joint investments."
"The response from the industry has been very positive and there is a clear increase in demand," says Matthias Bauer, Managing Director of Vogel Ventures, the investment vehicle of specialist media company Vogel Business Media. "The media partnership with 'Laborpraxis' and 'Process', our specialist magazines in the laboratory sector, has shown that labfolder's product strikes a chord with the market. We are delighted to be able to further expand the collaboration and provide media support."
Experienced business angels are also supporting labfolder in the current financing round. "The current user structure shows promising opportunities for internationalization," says Jan Bohl, who, as one of the first investors in companies such as SoundCloud and Antibodies Online, brings expertise in the areas of internationalization and academic sales.
Dr. Wolfgang Vahrson supports labfolder with his experience in the field of scientific software development. "labfolder convinced me," says Dr. Vahrson. "It combines a clear operating concept with a sophisticated technical implementation. I look forward to supporting labfolder in integrating its software solution even better into laboratory workflows."
In October, labfolder and its partners will present the vision of an intelligent, networked laboratory of tomorrow at the Labvolution trade fair as part of the special show 'smartLAB - the intelligent laboratory of the future' from October 6 to 8.
About labfolder
labfolder was founded in 2013 with the mission to help researchers focus on research. labfolder is a documentation and planning tool for laboratory research. labfolder makes it easier to find data on the answers to scientific questions by digitally connecting the entire laboratory environment: Data, teams, workflows, equipment and materials.
The two founders, Dr. Florian Hauer and Dr. Simon Bungers, developed the idea during their doctoral studies in laboratories at Max Planck Institutes in Göttingen. Simon Bungers already gained his first entrepreneurial experience with the founding and successful sale of the customization webshop "sox-n-boxers". The third founder, Mathias Schäffner, who was in charge of development as CTO, left the company at the end of 2014 for personal reasons. At the beginning of 2015, Joris van Winsen joined the team as late founder and CFO.
The start-up project had already received an EXIST start-up grant from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology in 2012 and was supported by profund, the start-up support program of Freie Universität Berlin. Furthermore, labfolder has won awards in several business plan competitions (including Science-4-Life and the Berlin Brandenburg Business Plan Competition). In October 2013, Vogel Ventures GmbH, VC Fonds Technologie Berlin GmbH and business angel Jan Bohl invested a high six-figure sum in the start-up as part of the seed financing round.
Press contact:
Dr. Florian Hauer
Phone: +49 (0) 30 91572642
Mobile: +49 (0) 176 24337833
E-mail: fh@labfolder.com
Web: www.labfolder.com
Address:
labfolder GmbH
Bismarckstr. 10-12
10625 Berlin
Germany
